A New Year's Wish from All of Us At Swimming in the Trees

A New Year's wish from all of us over here at Swimming in The Trees.

Practice a little bit of tikkun olam in the coming year, and encourage others to do the same.

xo

Swimming, mgmt.

Thanks, The Pen & Muse!

Thanks, Denise and The Pen & Muse , for letting me run my mouth (or keyboard) about writing, inspiration, and character development. And about my least-favorite word.

PS, there's book giveaway on the site, so if you feel like throwing your hat (or pen) into the ring, there might be a signed copy of Invisible Sisters in it for you.

Cute animal stories from Timely Manor

M. has summed up the hijinx at Timely Manor for us.

Note to the allergic and those who tend to say "awwww" - a kitten is involved.

Stocking and restocking were sitting on a fence...

They'll be restocking signed copies of Invisible Sisters over at A Cappella books next week, just as soon as I can get over there with a pen.

Just so you know.

(image of A Cappella books from, well, A Cappella books website.)

And So This is Christmas

And it's time to watch this . Really.

Writing Blogs, Writing Blogs, Writing All the Way..

Sing it!

Another great writing blog to tell you about - with an 'end of year' reading list that's very eclectic and good.

Welcome to 8 Hamilton Avenue .

What I'll be doing the next three weeks!

This is what I'll be doing the next three weeks, which is my winter academic break.

No, not tailgating a truck!

While I'm reading, maybe you want to read this . An inside look at Walt Whitman's notebook, from the New York Times.


Picture taken by me in C'town .

Fortune Telling by Cellular Phone

The Oracle at Wi-Fi. Seriously. A fortune telling interactive art project by my friend Beth Lilly.

Next call in date is January 7th.

You'll be surprised by what the fates tell you. And the photography is stunning.

Where do I call? What do I do? What's the photograph like? No magic there - go here.

Oracle at Wi-Fi image courtesy & copyright Beth Lilly

Books & Politics

For those of us who followed Bernie Sanders's Senate filibuster last week, and for those of us who didn't, here's a link to Galleycat's "Bernie Sanders Book Club. "

According to Google Analytics...

According to Google analytics, three people in two cities in Canada read this blog last week.

Canadians, did you know that I can sing your national anthem? Yep, here in Georgia, I still know (most of) the first verse to "Oh, Canada."

Blame it on summer camp in upstate New York in 1972. Way, way upstate. Like almost Montreal.

I liked singing "Oh, Canada."

Why We Didn't Go to the Dakota That Day

Thirty years ago today I was taking a bath (I've taken them since) and heard my housemates screaming in horror from the kitchen. Five or six or eight of us lived in a hovel in Brookline, Mass. (Coolidge Corner, across from the Stop & Shop & the IHOP. A good place to go in the middle of the night to shake packs of cigarettes from the machine in the foyer.)

Some of us went to some colleges. Some of us, less so.

I ran, in a towel, into the kitchen.

John Lennon had been shot. I dripped. The apartment was cold. It was dark out. Five or six or eight of us debated whether or not to drive down to New York. Five hours, give or take.

We didn't, because we didn't want to be away from the radio, the news, each other.

Perhaps the car to which we had access (whose, I wonder now) had no radio. Perhaps we didn't want to go out into the world.

At some point I got dressed.

As I recall, we huddled around the radio. It appears, in memory, that we had no t.v., but we must have. Rabbit ears. We listened to WBCN.

We stayed up all night.


(PS I have always loved this image of the Dakota, from probably 1890s, when the building was named that because it might as well have been as far from Manhattan as the Dakotas.)

What I'm Reading

What I'm reading now? The Emperor of All Maladies . Hey, what can I say? I love reading about medicine and culture. Seriously.

When I'm done with it, it's going on the ready-access shelf for this topic, alongside "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," and Lewis Thomas's "Lives of a Cell."

That's the mother - or father - of them all.

Yes, I have shelves of books about cancer, biology, medical culture, and narrative medicine.

Seeing as how it's winter, this cracks me up

Mi esposo's art and humor. Cracks me up.

So cool to watch an author find her voice

Two summers ago, I got to be the Peter Taylor Nonfiction Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers' Workshop. I was essentially the TA for the talented and terrific Rebecca McClanahan.

But this isn't about her, or me. It's about one of the students in that workshop, who sent me a piece this week, published in a mag called "kill author." And man, she's gotten good.

Take a gander here at Alexa Kontes's work.

Here's a holiday toast to writers hither and yon, working at it, finding their voices, sending work out into the world.

(Image, Finn House at Kenyon College. Photo by me.)